The victims of domestic violence in Florida know why domestic violence has increased…

Thank the forced shared parenting custody law change in Florida that went into effect in October of 2008, and the inability to leave the abuser as well as failure of law enforcement to arrest, and failure to prosecute by state’s attorney, and failure to incarcerate or even find guilty by judges as well as even punishing some victims as in the Parental Alienation Custody Scams.

The problem with the partnership with the FL Coalition Against Domestic Violence is that they have people who are involved with the AFCC who advocate for forced shared parenting and counseling for abusers instead of jail. True DV advocates need to disassociate from groups that do not agressively punish the abuser. Anyone who advocates for education and training needs to get educated and trained that batterers intervention and parenting classes only seem to make batterers smarter at not getting caught and finding new and more creative ways of abusing their victims, like by keeping the victims bound to them and taking their children away by claiming to be a victim of the fictitious parental alienation syndrome.

TALLAHASSEE, FL – Joined by the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence and numerous state agencies and law enforcement organizations, Attorney General McCollum today announced his office will create and lead a statewide domestic violence fatality review team. The team will conduct fatality and near-fatality reviews and will ultimately create policy recommendations to address issues which may prevent domestic violence homicides.

“There is an urgent need to identify strategies that will address the brutality of these homicides, and will ultimately help us save lives,” said Attorney General McCollum.

Florida Department of Law Enforcement data comparing Jan-June 2008 to Jan-June 2009 reflects 8.9 percent increase in domestic violence homicides, 100 percent increase in domestic violence manslaughters, and 38 percent increase in stalking which often serves as a precursor to homicide. These statistics indicate there is an urgent need to identify strategies to address the brutality of these homicides.

“The domestic violence community is overwhelmed by General McCollum’s foresight to create a statewide domestic violence fatality review team. Florida has experienced some of the most brutal domestic violence homicides in our state’s history and there has never been a more important time to shine a light on domestic violence fatalities,” said Tiffany Carr, CEO of the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence. “We have no doubt this will be the first step to reverse the increase of domestic violence homicides in Florida. As always, we applaud Attorney General McCollum for his commitment to end violence against women.”

Reviews conducted by local fatality review teams in Florida are a critical component in helping communities to understand the events that may have led to a domestic violence homicide, and ultimately to determine how to prevent such homicides. However, local fatality review teams, comprised almost exclusively of volunteers, have limited resources to conduct reviews, and the focus of their conclusions and recommendations is to effectuate change at the local level.

Section 741.316, Fla. Statutes authorizes the establishment of a domestic violence fatality review team at the state level to review fatal and near-fatal incidents of domestic violence. With the establishment of a Statewide Fatality Review team, Florida will be the only state in the country to have both statewide and local fatality review teams. Representatives of the domestic violence advocacy community will provide the leadership to the team because it will be critical to view systemic response to domestic violence through the eyes of victims of domestic violence.

In addition to the Attorney General’s Office, team members will include, at a minimum, the Florida Coalition Against Domestic Violence, the Department of Children and Families, the Department of Corrections, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, the Department of Education, representatives from the Sheriffs, Police Chiefs, Prosecuting Attorneys, and Public Defenders Associations, Florida Legal Services, certified domestic violence centers, batterers’ intervention programs, the Office of State Court Administration, a clerk of the court, a medical examiner, a child death review team representative, a physician, a psychologist or other mental health professional, a sexual assault counselor, and a survivor of domestic violence. The initial organization meeting will occur on December 9, 2009 in Tallahassee and will be hosted by the Attorney General.

The Statewide team will be separated into two working groups – one group will conduct case review of selected cases, and the subsequent group will review the data from local fatality review teams to ascertain trends and systemic gaps. A final report is anticipated by September 2010.

Although personal economics like the loss of a job may be one of several critical factors, most experts agree that the strength or weakness of the national economy is not related to the frequency of murder-suicides, despite media coverage that suggests otherwise.

Wendy Murphy: Punishing abusers key to protecting women

But we don’t really need an “awareness month” anymore. There’s so much domestic violence, we’re in a chronic state of awareness. What we really need is a revolution.

First the facts:

- A woman is beaten every 15 seconds.

- Nearly two dozen victims of domestic violence are already dead this year alone in Massachusetts. Other states report similar numbers.

- As many as 10 million children a year are exposed to domestic violence, causing them to suffer emotional and psychological harm, not to mention that they grow up believing that smacking your spouse is part of a “normal” relationship. No surprise then that boys who watch their fathers beat their mothers are far more likely as adults to do the same thing to their female partners.

- According to the Justice Department, women suffer violent victimization more than 4 million times a year. Approximately one-third of the crimes are committed by intimate partners.

- Domestic violence is the leading cause of injury for American women between the ages of 15 and 44.

- Among homeless women and children, half are homeless because of domestic violence.

- Most cases of domestic violence are not reported to law enforcement because victims fear retaliation, are financially dependent on their abuser, or believe the justice system will not protect them and/or is useless to deter the violence.

- Of the cases that are reported and accepted for prosecution, only about half end in conviction while one-third are dismissed by the prosecutor. For the small percentage of cases that end in conviction, the punishment is usually trivial.

In sum, there are three main reasons why women are abused in such large numbers by men who claim to love them: Offenders aren’t being punished! Offenders aren’t being punished! Offenders aren’t being punished!

Some argue that punishment doesn’t stop domestic violence and that we need to do more “education and prevention” to change the way males are raised so they will learn to respect women more. These tend to be the people who get funding to do “education and prevention.” In other words, they’re paid to co-opt victims into believing that justice and punishment aren’t important even though some research shows that the only thing that stops violent men is incapacitation (read: jail).

Even if education and cultural retraining might help some day, while we’re waiting around for our species to evolve, we need to give all endangered women a .45 caliber equalizer and we need to ramp up the punishment of batterers so that beating a woman isn’t sentenced on par with spitting on the sidewalk.

Anti-incarceration advocates will tell you that prison isn’t fun – and that it often spawns a toxic mental software that makes men who enter come out worse than ever when their sentence wraps up.

But if fear of becoming a monster in prison, and respect for women isn’t enough to deter a man from beating his wife, he’s already toxic – and putting him behind bars will prevent him from infecting innocent others with his poison. Punishment isn’t the only way to stop violence, but it is a legitimate and effective feature of our legal system. Lots of research shows how states that send a higher percentage of criminals to prison have lower rates of crime, even after controlling for all of things like poverty and urbanization.

But incarceration is a dirty word in the lexicon of some liberals who claim that locking people up gives the government dangerous amounts of power and threatens the freedom of the individual.

They’re wrong.

The freedom of FEMALE individuals is actually greatly enhanced when criminals who target women for violence are incapacitated.